


Imperfect

by Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I mean Aerie lost her wings, It's Xan you know him, Mostly talking, Past Abuse, Phantom pain, Thank you for this prompt, Which makes her an amputee, implied depression, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-05-01 17:32:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19182487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus/pseuds/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus
Summary: A gift to the wonderful Zhenta, who requested two characters who haven't interacted in canon, well, interacting. I went with Xan and Aerie, who isn't sure what this sad new elf's deal is, but damned if she isn't determined to cheer him up!





	Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zhenta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zhenta/gifts).



It has been a mere couple of days since the Bhaalspawn’s party picked up the elven wizard they met on the road (the Bhaalspawn seemed very happy to see him; said something about being old friends), but it was clear to Aerie that he was a troubled soul.

Well, she paused, looking up from her spellbook to glance at him, that was putting it mildly. The elf, Xan as he had introduced himself, was perhaps the most pessimistic individual she has met in her entire life. Gloom hung over him like a raincloud, casting a shadow on his delicate features so that he always looked tired. Aerie was also yet to see him laugh or at least smile, as his lips were frozen in a perpetual frown of someone who only saw the world in shades of grey. He spoke rarely, and in a monotone voice proclaiming the hopelessness of their cause, lives, and the world overall.

Now, Aerie has met her share of people both at the circus and outside it; she knew what a pessimist looked like. Xan wasn’t that. He was… he was worse somehow, though she did not know why; he didn’t speak of his past from before he met the Bhaalspawn. What nightmares tugged at his soul? What events took place to break him down into this miserable shell of an individual? She didn’t want to pry, knowing from her own experience that forcefully bringing up unwanted memories tended to make them even more painful, but how could she let him suffer? She was a priestess, after all; wasn’t it her duty to soothe the pain of others? Hells, duty or no, she was never one to stand aside when another was miserable. Ever since she was a child, she loved hearing the laughter of others, loved making them happy. This was one of the many reasons why she took to Quayle so quickly after he saved her; being an illusionist, he had a knack for sparking wonder in the eyes of others, and under his rule, the circus flourished from a nightmare to an explosion of colour and laughter, adults and children alike gazing at the performers with awe and joy, all of their worries forgotten.

A sharp burst of pain pulled her out of the thoughts, and she reached behind her to clumsily massage her back. Phantom pain, she had learned the feeling was – her body missed the wings she used to have and ached when it couldn’t find them. Jaheira rubbed a herbal balm into her skin once in a while to make it hurt less, but Aerie doubted that it would ever go away. Even after years bound to the ground, she still found herself sleeping on her stomach or ducking when crossing narrower doorways so that the wings she no longer had wouldn’t get caught in it.

The pain, she suspected with a twinge of sadness, was more than physical.

Perhaps Xan, too, had wings he was deprived of?

Closing her spellbook with a sigh, she stood up and crossed their humble campsite to sit beside him, under a tall oak tree. The Bhaalspawn took Minsc to search for more firewood while Jaheira was expertly preparing a pair of rabbits she had hunted down sometime earlier, seeming to passionately ignore Jan Jansen, who was in the middle of yet another of his stories. Aerie couldn’t help but smile; the quirky gnome was an illusionist like her uncle, and just like him he never failed to cheer her up even when things got as ugly as their latest excursion to the Umar Hills – she knew that the shadows would haunt her in dreams for many days.

“May I study with you?” she asked politely, opening her spellbook once more.

Xan looked up from his to give her a half annoyed, half resigned look.

“You’re here already, aren’t you?” he shrugged. “You don’t require my permission.”

She frowned. “I can leave if you want.”

Another shrug. “Leave or stay, it makes little difference to me.” With that, he returned to studying his spells, seeming to no longer pay attention to her existence.

Aerie sighed quietly and went over her spells once more, idly toying with the holy symbol of Baervan Wildwanderer; a wooden carving of a raccoon’s head. She made it herself out of oak, a symbol of her devotion to the deity. It made the worship more personal, she reckoned, turning the carving in her hands and finding the imperfections with her thumb. It was her first attempt at woodworking, and many a nick and prick her fingers had sustained from knife and splinter alike before it even began to resemble a raccoon, but every ounce of blood and sweat poured into it only made it more special; she was sure that Baervan appreciated her efforts and accidental blood sacrifices.

In fact, he seemed to appreciate it so much that the carving doubled as her arcane focus, allowing her to cast simpler spells without the need for material components.

“Did you make this?” Xan finally seemed to notice her again, sky-blue eyes glued to the racoon head dancing between her fingertips.

She looked down at it, a small smile playing on her lips.

“Yes,” she said, stroking it fondly. “I made it shortly after my uncle introduced me to Baervan Wildwanderer, a gnomish deity of nature.”

Xan’s shapely eyebrows rose slightly. “It’s rather poorly made,” he noticed. “It’s obvious that you have little talent for woodworking.”

Anger flared up inside her. “Maybe so,” she shrugged with dignity, keeping in mind her desire to cheer him up, so she probably shouldn’t get too heated up, “it was my first attempt, you know, but it means a lot to me and aids me when casting, so I have no plans to cast it away purely because it’s not as fancy as that sword of yours.”

Instinctively, he threw his cloak over the hilt of the Moonblade, keeping it out of sight. His features softened.

“I apologise for upsetting you,” he muttered, looking away. “I didn’t know it was of such importance.”

Damnit.

“It’s nothing,” she placed a soothing hand on his shoulder. “You’re right, it _is_ rather poorly made, but who said it has to be perfect?” She smiled, hoping that he would reciprocate. “It doesn’t have to be perfect as long as it brings you joy.”

Xan scoffed. “Tell that to my father – I remember him saying that he would disown my older brother if he failed his magic training.”

Aerie’s brows knitted together at that. “That is horrible! No father should wish to cast his child away for any reason! Was he like that to you, too?”

He shook his head. “I wish.” His lips twisted into something similar to a wry smile, but not quite. “I was the youngest, so for the most part he ignored me no matter what I did to make myself stand out. My magical powers were better than those of my siblings and I finished my studies faster than them. I was even accepted by the Greycloaks shortly afterwards! But did that matter to him?” He sighed. “No matter how perfect you are, what does it matter in the end?”

She looked down at the carving in her hands, sadness clawing at her heart. Her memories of her parents were rather cloudy no matter how desperately she hung on to them, but their kindness was something that always stuck out in her mind. How could any parent be otherwise?

“Is this why you see no hope for our cause?” she asked gently. Perhaps this hopelessness was what made him so miserable.

He shrugged, turning the page in his spellbook without looking at it. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “But does it matter? My doom is certain, as is yours and of the rest of our party, no matter what my opinion of it is.”

There it was, the doom he spoke of so often. Aerie wondered how he could see it in the beautiful grove of oak trees they were sitting in, or the colourful town of Trademeet which they had saved from evil druids. Even the Umar Hills, crawling with shadows, had little pockets of light they could take solace in.

Even while she was taken into captivity, locked in a cage until her wings had to be removed to save her life, even while she tripped over her own feet, clumsy like a newborn deer, having to find her balance again without the familiar weight on her back, she never lost hope that things would get better.

“No doom is ever certain,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Not if there’s something to be done about it.”

Xan looked up at her with a strange expression.

“How do you know?” he asked, and Aerie was shocked to recognise it as a genuine question. His face was a mask of anguish. “You were caged in a circus, correct? Lost your wings. How did you not give in to despair? Down in the mines…” he paused, cringing as if he was struck, “…I was…”

The mines? Aerie could vaguely recall the Bhaalspawn describing their meeting; Xan used to be a prisoner of a Cyricist named Mulahey, held captive at the lowest level of the Nashkel mines. What took place in those dark corridors that left him so shaken?

Eventually, he seemed to find his voice. With a sigh, he uttered words that turned her blood into ice:

“I only stayed alive because they forced me to.” He shook his head, as if chasing away the phantom of agony. “I couldn’t even kill myself right, damnit! Nothing I’ve ever done amounted to anything: my studies, my work as a Greycloak, even my attempts to deprive my foes of a hostage.”

He slumped down against the tree trunk, suddenly exhausted, his spellbook lying open and forgotten on his lap.  
“What good _am_ I?”

They fell quiet for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts even as Minsc and the Bhaalspawn returned, carrying heaps of firewood. Minsc sent her a joyful smile, one which she tried to reciprocate. How hard it was to believe that a party made up of such wonderful people was doomed to fail!

Turning back to Xan, she straightened up, knowing the answer deep in her heart.

“You don’t have to succeed in everything you do,” she said, once more placing a hand on his shoulder. Her voice was warm and soft, comforting like an embrace after a nightmare. “You just have to try. Try to study a difficult spell, try to carve a racoon with no prior knowledge of woodworking, even simply try to survive when everything seems to be hopeless.”

Xan was looking at her now, eyes wide.

“The only time when all is truly lost,” she carried on, feeling a flame burn in her chest, warmth spreading all over her body and the fire lending her voice power, “is when you give up. When you stop fighting, stop trying. When you let the world convince you that you’re worthless, _that_ is when you’re truly doomed. So get up, Xan of Evereska, and do something about the doom you’re so certain is inevitable!”

She paused when she felt the whole party’s eyes on her. Even Boo was staring at her from Minsc’s shoulder.

Jaheira raised an eyebrow. “Well put, child,” she said, seeming genuinely impressed.

Aerie blushed furiously, sinking back down on the grass (she had no recollection of standing up) and clearing her throat awkwardly.

“Sorry,” she squeaked, but froze when she saw something she never saw before; something none of the companions ever did.

Xan was smiling.

He reached out slowly, as if hesitantly, to gently touch her hand.

“You have nothing to apologise for,” he told her. His voice still sounded as sad and tired as usual, but also lighter somewhat, as if the burden resting on his shoulders was lessened. “In fact, I should thank you for knocking me out of my misery.” He chuckled, and the Bhaalspawn did a double take at the sound. “I… I’m not sure if I’m ready to believe you yet, Aerie, but I hope that I will someday. Thank you.”

Returning his smile tenfold, bright like the rising sun, Aerie grasped his hand in hers.

A couple of weeks later, she had to heal that very same hand from a multitude of cuts and scratches.

“What happened to you?” she asked when she was done. They got out of their last battle largely unscathed, and the bushes they had to wade through on their way back to Athkatla didn’t have any thorns she was aware of.

Instead of replying, Xan showed her a wooden carving of a bird.

“It’s not perfect,” he said in his usual tired monotone. Then he looked down on it, sad blue eyes filling with quiet fondness. “But it’s something.”

At the end of the day, it mattered very little whether they were doomed or not, as long as they didn’t go down without a fight. After all, even the darkest of fates could be averted by a single spark of light, the faintest touch of kindness, the weakest attempt at struggle.

“And sometimes, that is enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I know that Aerie gets a fancy schmancy holy symbol when she levels up sufficiently, but I thought that it would be nice for her to have one she made herself. Perhaps the canon one is an upgrade of sorts? She could use the new one as a divine focus and the old one as an arcane focus, I don't know. 
> 
> Also, I took a LOT of liberties with some backstory elements and actually never wrote these characters before, but I hope that you liked it nonetheless!


End file.
